Hazel Park Bronze Star recipient ‘became a hero’

Hazel Park Bronze Star recipient ‘became a hero’

By
Dustin Blitchok, For Digital First Media

Friday, May 23, 2014

When Bill Scarmeas was a sophomore at Hazel Park High School on the afternoon of May 21, 1969, he was called out of a class assembly and asked to report to the principal’s office. His friends thought he was in trouble.

The principal told Scarmeas that his older brother, Cpl. James Sam Scarmeas Jr., had been killed in action in Vietnam.

“I walked home from my high school. I told my younger brother — I had to walk over to his elementary school, and I went and got him. I walked him home and I talked to him about what happened.”

Scarmeas, now 60 and living in Berkley, said the anniversary of his brother’s death and Memorial Day allow him to reflect on those who have fallen. Wednesday marked 45 years to the day after that spring afternoon in the principal’s office at Hazel Park High School.

Cpl. Scarmeas, 18, was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star for his valor in Quang Ngai, in South Vietnam, when he fought back against two waves of attacking NVA soldiers.

“Some didn’t come home, like my brother,” Scarmeas said.

“You learn and you remember those folks, people like my brother. On a dark night, May 21, 1969, he came under heavy fire. He was 18 years old and became a hero. A young kid from Hazel Park. Amazing.”

Hazel Park “was very adversely affected by the war. There were a number of casualties out of Hazel Park.”

A grenadier, Scarmeas was providing security for Bridge 402U near Landing Zone Liz when he came under attack. A letter from the Army said Scarmeas’ fire killed a North Vietnamese soldier and forced others to retreat before a second wave came in.

“He gallantly fired back against the attackers, but was mortally wounded after he considerably weakened the hostile forces,” the letter said.

After his brother graduated high school in 1968, enlisted and was deployed to Vietnam, Scarmeas was able to communicate with him thanks to a group of ham radio operators in southern Oakland County.

“They connected a communication bridge so the guys in ‘Nam would be able to go to communication centers and communicate by shortwave, and they could call home,” Scarmeas said.

“The guy in Royal Oak, he’d call you and say, ‘we’re going to have a phone call from Vietnam that’s going to come from shortwave.”

The parties in a call would say “over” after a sentence, and the operator would push a button to transmit.

“That was the last communication we had, and that was in the early part of 1969.”

Scarmeas, a Realtor at Cranbrook Realtors, volunteers with TAPS, the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors.

The organization assists families who’ve lost loved ones in the military. Scarmeas traveled to Washington, D.C. last year with his wife, Jackie, for the nonprofit’s Memorial Day event.

“I wish they would have had something like that when I was younger. There’s so much more support today than there was back then.”

The face of war has changed, Scarmeas said, from the NVA in 1969 to today’s stateless War on Terror. Many of those he’s counseled at the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors are family members of troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The soldiers who died in Vietnam were “all heroes,” Scarmeas said, fighting when their country called.